Reading 1-1 Sheffield Wednesday: Brian McDermott and Carlos Carvalhal reaction
Saturday 23 January 2016 19:44, UK
Sheffield Wednesday head coach Carlos Carvalhal believes his side can improve over the closing stages of the Sky Bet Championship campaign.
Wednesday retained sixth place, and a play-off spot, with a hard-earned 1-1 draw with Reading at the Madejski Stadium.
"I reckon that we can be more strong in the second half of the season," Carvalhal said. "We are in a much better position than at the start of the season and we are winning a lot of points. So let's see what we can do.
"We take every game, in whichever competition, very seriously. We are outsiders for the sixth place but we are still in a very good position.
"We started the game very well with very high quality. But we lost some energy and the capacity to keep the ball in attack.
"The result wasn't what we liked or what we wanted but it's the reality. Reading had much more of the ball but we controlled the game. We always expected to create something on the counter-attack."
Wednesday had been in good form before their trip to Berkshire, winning six of seven matches in all competitions, including their previous four on the bounce.
And they started superbly at the Madejski Stadium, with Barry Bannan striking a post early on with a low drive.
In the 10th minute, Wednesday went ahead. Good build-up work on the right gave Gary Hooper time and space to score his fifth goal in three matches.
For Hooper, signed permanently in the week after playing on loan from Norwich City since October, it was his seventh goal in 13 league appearances for Wednesday.
However, Reading could have been level in the 24th minute after Matej Vydra had been brought down in the area by Wednesday captain Glenn Loovens.
Yet although Vydra's spot-kick was struck fiercely, it thumped into goalkeeper Keiren Westwood's left-hand post and rebounded to safety.
Reading still responded positively but Anton Ferdinand, George Evans, Oliver Norwood and Jordan Obita all squandered decent openings.
The pattern continued after the interval, with Reading dominating play and Wednesday content to sit back.
And Reading were finally rewarded in the 74th minute, when centre-back Jake Cooper nodded home powerfully from Norwood's corner. It was Cooper's first goal of the season and also Reading's first goal from a corner this term.
"The first 20 minutes, Wednesday played really well," Brian McDermott, the Reading manager, said. "They scored a good goal and that's why they are where they are in the league.
"But over the last 60 or 70 minutes, we definitely deserved a draw but we probably should have won. The fans were singing 'we've scored from a corner' and that was quite funny. I liked that.
"But we're delighted. It was a great header from Jake. And when we got back to 1-1, I thought we would go on and win the game."
